A numbe of international golfers, Indian gofers, Asian Tour golfers along with young golfers from the country (India) will take part in the first ever Golf Premier League (GPL). The League modeled on the lines of the Indian Premier League is scheduled to be a three-day event starting next month at Aamby Valley near Pune. It is the Indian golfer Shiv Kapur who is the brain child of this GPL along with another amateur golfer, Neeraj Sareen.

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A FORMER Indian golfer Rakesh Sharma, told this ciizen journalist. “It is a new program (league) for golfers especially, who are coming into the game of golf.”

The competition is going to witness participation of eight franchises, which would comprise of four players each. An auction for Indian and international golfers is expected to take place later during the month. The competition is going to be played for over 14 holes with three hours of play each day. It is going to be played in a stroke-play-cum-best-ball format. Rakesh Sharma explained about the format and said, “Among all the team players, the scores of the best player of that particular team would be taken into account.”

Darren Clarke, Rich Beem, David Howell, Johan Edfors, Angel Cabrera, Michael Campbell are some foreign players that would be participating in the expected cash-rich GPL. Ganganjeet Bhullar and Daniel Chopra, along with Shiv Kapur would be among the Indian golfers in the league in the list of many. But Rakesh does not believe that such international players coming in would help the sport so much as he said, “The Indian players nor the youngsters are going to benefit hugely from the presence of international stars, but it is surely going to help in making the game popular in the country. Our Indian players are better than some of the Asian golfers.” He feels that the media is going to play an important role in making the game popular by reporting such competitions in India.

Out of the eight franchises, only four have been finalised. The finalised ones are Delhi Darts, Colombo Sixers, Shubhkamna Eagles and Tamilnadu Pulis. One can expect new franchises to be finalised before the auctions take place along with the Television partner for the competition. Shiv Kapur has introduced this GPL hoping to popularise the sport of golf in India and also give chance to youngsters in the country to play against world class golfers. Some golfers may never make it to the big stage, but GPL could provide them the best platform for them to compete against some of the best in the business.

Rakesh further added, “If you start such kind of league, you give access to golfers who are not members of any golf course. They get an opportunity to perform.” India does not have a number of golf courses, so one has to be a member of that particular club to play in that course. In this scenario, the GPL would provide a huge platform for youngsters to prove themselves competing against international golfers.